Higher-Order Consequences
by selori
Summary: Loki is still reeling from his defeat by the Avengers, and Agent Coulson's condemnations replaying endlessly in his mind don't help. When Loki escapes from Asgard's dungeon, he has one goal: stealing the mirror that shows all realities, all universes, from Odin's treasury of weapons, and then using it to find a reality where he WINS.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

"You're gonna lose. It's in your nature. You lack conviction."

—Phil Coulson

**Asgard Prime, T = 0**

"You're gonna lose. It's in your nature." Agent Coulson's words burned, burned, burned, freezing in Loki's throat, his heart, his mind, colder than the shackles that bound him to the cell wall. It's in your nature, nature red in tooth and claw your way back up to the bridge, don't fall into the abyss stares into you lack conviction on all counts of murder of father, patricide to kill Laufey, fratricide to kill Thor will destroy all the monsters parents tell their children about at night, monsters under the bed now lie in it and get up with fleas no ants, petty itching trivial insects prating of justice and genocide to kill a world without end up with the Other and dream of pain in the heart pierced by the spear in your hands you the Tesseract, greatest power in nature, in your nature to lose...

Such an insignificant man, to leave his words chasing around the head of a god. Loki's lips pulled down from his nose in disgust. This black-suited human had challenged the Destroyer, claiming allegiance to his pathetic SHIELD. A petty bureaucrat, brandishing his conferred authority, his regulations and rules. When Loki had taken Agent Barton's mind and stripped it for information on those who would oppose him, this agent, this handler had often appeared in the background, ubiquitous as the SHIELD-grey furniture. Loki had dismissed him as meaningless support staff, until the moment Agent Coulson confronted him before Thor's glass cage.

Loki had shown him his foolishness, indeed, he thought smugly. His pointed scepter through that fool's heart had been the end of him, though Loki had left him to bleed his last alone. Fool, to challenge Loki. It made Loki's victory all the sweeter when he overheard Agent Romanov tell Stark that there would be no funeral, that Agent Coulson's body had dissolved into Tesseract blue within the morgue. It was an unexpected side-effect of the scepter, but a happy result, to be sure.

With far too much time to think, the dead agent's words echoed and repeated and chased those of Tony Stark through Loki's thoughts. There is no version of this where you come out on top. Could it be that in no version of history he was victorious? Lose. Impossible, surely. Even lowly Midgard's thinkers knew that all things must occur at least once, at least in one space, in one universe. Loki himself had visited many such neighboring realities, though none had yet been pleasant enough to compel him to tarry there. Lose, lose, lose.

Could the seeds of his failure indeed sprout from his own nature? You lack conviction. No, there must be a universe abutting this where Loki triumphed, where he caused all Midgard to kneel before him, where he ruled Asgard, where he took Odin All-Father's place, yes, and Laufey's, too, and ruled even the Nine Realms together. And he knew how to find it.

It was easier to free himself from Asgard's prison than Loki had feared. With the magic-dampening spells in his cell it was not easy, but given appropriate motivation it was possible. The bindings were painful, true, but feather-light in comparison to what The Other had devised. Still, he mewled pathetically a handful of days. His prison guards who had first looked upon him with rage and scorn soon regarded him with disgust for his weakness. No true Aesir would be so demeaned, to whimper in a cage. Their eyes soon passed o'er him without seeing. It was a matter of a few short months before it was clear they had ceased to think of him at all.

All these things Loki turned to his advantage. His guards' loathing of him deafened their ears to his increasingly feeble noises, and blinded their eyes to his weak movements. Soon he was free to manipulate his bonds with his body as well as his magics. Loki probed for weaknesses in his prison and in the minds of his captors. When a guard stumbled in Loki's cell and fell, cursing, to the floor, his partner did not hesitate to leave the door open as he laughingly assisted him to his feet and out of the chamber. After all, Loki was bound securely to the wall, was he not? And he had long since ceased to strain against his bonds. If either guard cast a glance at their prisoner, they would have seen no movement in his body and no interest in his dull eyes turned toward the floor.

Indeed, as the second jailer assisted his clumsy partner out of the cell, neither saw so much as a shadow ghost along the corridor ahead of them. Had they cared to look, they would have seen Loki within his cell, securely fastened to the wall, quiet and unmoving as he had been of late.

Loki worked his way down Asgard's halls, now invisible, now shadow, now an image of another. The sheer variety of changes appealed to his nature it's in your nature, lose, lose and heightened the challenge. An item in the treasure of Odin's weapon's vault would grant him all his desires. The Jotnar yearned for their precious puling pathetic Casket of Ancient Winters and dreamt of the glorious Jotunheim your ambition is little its power would produce. What was the power of a thousand killing winters' cold to that which Loki sought? An artifact so potent the All-Father had considered it too dangerous to be housed with the main trove, had never displayed it even to his sons. Son, he corrected. Son and Loki.

During his imprisonment, Loki's intention had crystallized into resolve to find this Mirror of Truth. Or Mirror of the Infinite (the translation of its name had been somewhat in doubt). He had called to mind every scrap of information he had heard or read about the mirror. It was said to show reflections of all universes, some altered from another by as little as one choice. This alone would make the artifact a powerful tool – none could protect secrets from one who wielded such an item. But in addition, it was heavily implied that the mirror was more than a tool for information. Its owner was not limited to mere observation, but could use the mirror as a portal to enter the other universes.

He wended his way through the weapons vault to the chamber where the mirror resided, only to stop in dismay. The mirror filled most of a wall in the weapons vault. He had no desire to exploit the mirror while standing about in Asgard's dreary vault, waiting at each moment to be discovered. He turned over options in his mind as he approached, but instead of growing proportionally larger in his sight, the mirror remained the same apparent size. He blinked, but the mirror's size was consistent. He could now hold it in his two hands, and it took up a small space on the wall. In a flash of memory, he recalled his child self reaching his hand out to cup the moon in his palm, or squinting one eye to measure the height of an adult between his thumb and forefinger. Clearly, the mirror did not conform to the rules of perspective. It was the size it was in the beholder's eyes, whether that beholder was near or far.

The mirror flared as he grasped it. The faceted frame appeared at first to be crystalline, reflecting light. Upon closer inspection, each facet seemed to glow from within, many white, some golden, some laced with other colors. Further, the facets showed the same brain-twisting effects that the mirror as a whole did. It was impossible to focus on a facet of the frame; any plane he looked at was, without undergoing any intermediary changes, actually the center viewing surface.

It reflected his pallid face framed by stringy black hair grown long in his imprisonment. Purple-red shadows like bruises surrounded eyes that glinted blue, the intense, icy blue of the scepter. He who put the scepter in your hand, echoed in Loki's mind, there is no realm where he can not find you.

Well, thought Loki, let us test that theory.

**Chapter 1**

"The Casket wasn't the only thing you took from Jotunheim that day, was it?"

—Loki

**Home, T = 1**

Loki rematerialized in a pocket dimension he had long since made his own. The portal snapped shut behind him, and he felt years upon years of defensive spells lock into place, severing the tendrils of The Other's influence blue, to his mind's eye, always blue like the blade of a guillotine. He took a deep breath, his first free breath in eons, it seemed. Separation from The Other's scepter, while at first painful, had become welcome. Even in lowly Midgard, the distance in simple space had been a relief. The greater distance of Asgard was a balm.

With a mental flex, he clothed himself in his most familiar garb. His armor, gold and black and green, more comfortable than his own skin had been in years, flowed around him as he seated himself on his chair with the mirror in his hands. He blinked. Blue-green eyes. Green eyes, black hair, and moon-pale skin. So different from his not-brother, his not-father, his not-mother. If he had been born to Odin and Frigga truly, a true child of Asgard, would he have resembled them more?

**Asgard 2, T = 1**

One facet of the mirror drew his attention as it flashed gold. By the time he had shifted his gaze to it, the plane had become the center of the mirror without so much as disturbing his hands' grasp on the frame.

"But, the day will come, when one of you will have to defend that peace." Odin's voice resonated within the weapons vault as he faced his two blond sons from in front of the Casket of Ancient Winters.

"Do the Frost Giants still live?" Loki's blond self had barely uttered the question before the cherubic Thor interrupted.

"When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all." His eyes shone with hero worship. "Just as you did, father."

"A wise king never seeks out war," Odin chided mildly, "but he must always be ready for it."

Odin moved to leave the vault. Thor and Loki shared one fond glance with each other before running after their father to take his hands. "I'm ready, father!"

"As am I," Loki added, grasping his father's left hand.

"Only one of you can ascend to the throne," Odin responded. Loki waited for the addition he remembered from his own childhood, but no. Odin did not assert that they were both born to be kings.

Disgusted, Loki turned away from the obvious affection the boys showed each other. This would have been no improvement: still Thor's shadow, a pale reflection of the elder son. What was the callous Midgard phrase? "An heir and a spare," and Loki cast continually in the role of spare. Unneeded. Surplus to requirements.

**Asgard 3, T = 1**

Ah, but what if he were not the spare, but the heir himself? If Odin had had but one child? Another plane flared the gold of the Asgard throne room, as he saw himself, broad in shoulder as Thor had always been, approach Odin All-Father on his coronation day. Did he –? Did he truly stop in this procession to wink at the queen?

He watched his other self spin Mjolnir as a child would a toy before setting it to the floor with a resounding clang. The winged helm was removed and set aside as he knelt before Odin All-Father. The longer chin was his, the narrower face and prominent cheekbones, but the manner, the arrogance, was all as Thor had ever been.

Loki threw the mirror from him in revulsion. This was not Loki as Odin's beloved son. No, this was Odin's son named Loki instead of Thor by some chance decision. And what would come now? Would he, petulant child, lead the warriors three to do war on Jotunheim? They four, with no magic to aid them, no guard alerted to their plans and told to notify Odin and rescue them from their folly?

**Home, T = 1**

He glared daggers at the mirror where it rested across the room, so large again that it almost obscured the entire wall. In it, he could still see Loki Odinson petulantly demanding that his father yield to his judgment. "Teach them a lesson. Break their spirits..." Arrogant Thor had said those words once; now Loki's double was saying the same. As he watched, of the few facets that glowed on the frame, many flickered and went dark. "What is this?" Loki murmured.

He crossed to where the mirror had landed against the lounge and grasped it again. "Was I right? Would I then die?" He saw Loki Odinson fall in battle to Frost Giants. "Is this the fate of Loki the Aesir?" A few planes of the mirror flashed dimly, and as he shifted his gaze from one to another he saw —Loki given no quarter, no respite by Laufey, impaled and killed —Loki living long enough to lead the Warriors Three into a trap and be killed by Frost Giants, —Loki, golden-haired Sif, and the warriors mauled and eaten by the Jotnar's great beast, —Loki dead of blood loss, —Loki beheaded, —Loki entombed in ice, —Loki trampled, —Loki torn to shreds, —Loki herded off the edge of a cliff, only to fall and be impaled on ice spikes below…

He shuddered. That one was perhaps the worst. Instead of growing dark in evidence that his other self had died, this one remained a lambent gold. He wondered how long he would linger there, frozen, freezing, dying, yet living.

**Asgard 14, T = 5**

No, he could never have been Odin's son, either his firstborn or his second. Yet when else would he have been Loki of Asgard, feared and respected across realms? The mirror's frame flared in his hands, this time with fewer facets lit. Given time, he might even have been able to count them, but his attention was snared by the mirror itself. Instead of focusing on Loki's own face as it had previously, this time the mirror showed a huge, grossly misshapen head, with no hair either black or blond, and enormous eyes all of inky black.

"No. No. No. This is all wrong." For a moment Loki thought the mirror was echoing his thoughts, but then he saw them come from a tiny mouth the same mottled pink as the skin covering the figure's hairless head and emaciated limbs. Loki stared in consternation. The creature was neither Aesir nor Jotun, but it was surrounded by four humans where it reclined on a smooth grey slab, and they were questioning it agitatedly.

Loki let their words wash over him, taking in their matching dull-green uniforms marked with strange moon-over-a-mountain insignia, until the bespectacled one's question caught his ear: "...us who you are?"

"Loki," the creature replied.

Through his shock, Loki heard the same human mutter, "According to Norse mythology, that's the god of mischief."

"Impossible," Loki told himself. "What madness is this?"

"What did you want with Colonel O'Neill?" the woman demanded. As the humans nattered on to one another it became clear that this so-called Loki was working bravely to save his people. At some time past, the Aesir (or "the Asgard", as the humans referred to them in this universe) had begun to wane as a people. This Loki sought a cure for their diminishing, and the humans, tiny and petty though they were, railed against the unfairness of it all.

Loki's ears pricked again as the oldest human, the man with greying hair, decided to call Thor, despite their Loki's protests. Loki frowned, rubbing a thumb across a ridge on the mirror frame. Surely Thor would be of assistance in this contretemps. Despite his fondness for the inhabitants of Midgard, he understood that the continued survival of the Asgard must come first.

Of course, Loki himself had never been glad of the great lout's appearance, but this child-frail Loki appeared to have neither magic nor wit on his side to win free of those pathetic mortals.

This reality's Thor, another short, pink-grey figure, appeared in a flash of light, and immediately began apologizing for Loki's behavior.

Apologizing!

This time, Loki did not throw the mirror, having no desire to retrieve it again. But he wished himself away from this universe and the few glowing spots on the frame dimmed somewhat. No matter what possible victories lay in store in that universe (and, he admitted, they appeared quite unlikely), he had no desire to wear the form of some bobble-headed, glassy-eyed, stick-limbed child for the rest of his existence. No; whatever choices, decisions, or accidents led to that realm, he would never join it.


	2. Chapter 2

"I was a king! The rightful king of Asgard, betrayed!"

—Loki

**Home, T = 7**

Being Loki of Asgard, renegade geneticist and ink-eyed weakling, made being Odin's second son look positively inviting by comparison. At that thought, the mirror frame altered again. A number of facets glowed warmly, but each flickered, slightly different from the others, as if a myriad of flames were each caught in its own draft. The facets were too near infinite for Loki to say that any looked familiar, but he recognized the conversation between Odin, Thor Odinson, and Loki Odinson in the weapons vault easily enough.

**Asgard 2, T = 7**

"Do the Frost Giants still live?" Loki's blond self innocently asked. How could he know that an adult version of himself had attempted to exterminate them all?

As before, Thor inserted himself in the conversation before Odin could respond

"When _I'm_ king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all." His eyes shone with hero worship. "Just as you did, father."

_Monsters, monsters, monsters_ ricocheted through Loki's mind. How many times had he been told, as a child, as an adult, that the Frost Giants were monsters? Vicious, thoughtless beasts, desiring only destruction? His own words to Odin mocked him: _I am the monster parents tell their children about at night_.

"A wise king never seeks out war," Odin chided mildly, "but he must always be ready for it."

As Odin moved to leave the weapons vault, Loki scoffed at the scene before him. "Pay no heed, young Loki," he whispered poisonously. "Such considerations are not for such as you. Are you fool enough to think you could ever hold value in Odin's heart?" As his words resounded in the arching rooms of the vault, Loki watched the happiness fade from his child-self's face. "You will never be king," he continued spitefully. "You will never be more than Thor's pale echo, no more useful than a shadow."

Thor looked at Loki with fondness before running after his father to take his hand. "I'm ready, father!"

Loki-child, eyes full of tears, did not join him. "I will never be king," he whispered to the Casket of Ancient Winters. In adult Loki's hands, the mirror's central facet's gold dimmed, and the host of others lit with it began to flicker in unison.

**Home, T = 7**

"But I will," Loki vowed, releasing his hold on that version of reality. "I was king, and should be king of more than one realm." _king_, his thoughts agreed, _king, king, rightful king; rightful king, betrayed_

The mirror almost writhed between his hands, now mostly-flat, now a faceted orb, now pushing into dimensions that would melt a mortal's mind, now returning to a thick-framed mirror with a central face. If Loki had been able to track any one universe previously, this upheaval meant that ability was now gone. Nothing was where it had been, he'd lay his life, though a great profusion of gold-lit universes glowed under his hands. Some fundamental shift had taken place as a result of his request. He suspected the reality he was about to see diverged from the others in a drastic manner.

**Earth 1218, T = 7**

"God and his angels guard your sacred throne and make you long become it!" Though the speaker was out of Loki's sight, he had no doubt that it was this reality's Loki he addressed. The sentiment was correct, for one thing. And for another, Loki himself was seated on a throne, a gold crown atop his curly brown hair.

"Sure, we thank you," Loki's king-self responded. "My learned lord, we pray you to proceed and justly and religiously unfold why the law Salique that they have in France or should, or should not, bar us in our claim." Loki straightened slightly in surprise. For what reason was this king consulting the law? And abjuring his advisers to give him accurate readings thereof? Loki found the law useful only because its edicts' lacework showed him how best to dance through the loops and whorls left open. At times he enjoyed simply flouting the law, but he found more satisfaction in outwitting an opponent and particularly savored those times he had won his victory by setting the letter of the law against its spirit.

The mirror's view widened, and Loki saw an older man wittering on about genealogy and inheritance. Truly, the language was somewhat opaque, but his king-self seemed to be attending quite closely as he nodded on occasion. Loki scrutinized his other self; his eyes were the same bluish green, but his skin had a more golden hue, as if he spent time out-of-doors, and that brown hair shaved into a goatee on his chin—

"May I with right and conscience make this claim?" the king clarified at long last.

Truly, Loki thought, the differences were more than superficial. His king-self talked of war and gaining a throne, but he desired all possible assurance that he was right within the law to do so. His other advisers clustered about him, discussing contingencies and other requirements and Loki found his attention waning.

Their speech came through the AllSpeak oddly, with an unusual formality and rhythm that he had not found before. At a whim, he released his grasp on the AllSpeak spell. How interesting. _English_, the Earthers called it, but a flavor of English which Loki's tongue had never tasted. He repeated a bit of it to feel it in his mouth. "Tell you the Dauphin I am coming on, to venge me as I may and to put forth my rightful hand in a well-hallow'd cause."

Loki stopped, nonplussed. These were words and phrases he might easily choose on any day in Asgard's court, or even when addressing lowly mortals. Did his speech strike their ears thus? As he turned this thought in his mind, the king concluded his audience with his advisers. In the pause that followed came a shout in a voice he had not yet heard.

"And, SCENE!"

There was a high-pitched, metallic jangle, a shout of "That's a wrap!" and each person in his vision changed somewhat; one slumped; one shook his shoulders, his arms, then his hands; one stepped to the edge of the audience chamber and retrieved a white paper cup from a table; Loki's eyes flew to his king-self in time to see a man in jeans and a logo-ed t-shirt lift the crown from his head and walk it over to another table.

His king-self rose, smoothing the deep red doublet down over his waist, and shook out his legs. "That was lovely, Paul," he called after the crown thief, rubbing his forehead lightly. "No blister at all this time."

"Glad to hear it, Mr. Hiddleston," the crown-thief replied casually. "Just smoothed it down a bit in the front there. Thanks for letting us know."

"Tom!" a voice called from the group of king's advisers, and Loki's double turned to face them. Loki stared as his alter ego, this _Tom_, moved into conversation with the men who had moments ago been advising him most diffidently. Did that one just clap him on his shoulder? And his not-king-self answered with a wide grin, and a laugh, and a comment in a voice so low, so gentle that Loki could not hear it before the others erupted in appreciative laughter.

"Right then," called the same voice again, "all for today, gentlemen. And let's get those robes back to costuming tonight, shall we? Yes, I'm looking at you, Laurenson!" There was general laughter after this pronouncement as well.

The company quickly divested themselves of their long robes, changing to clothing that Loki recognized from his brief time in modern-day Midgard. They had been playing a scene. And his other self, though he pretended to be king, treated the others with deference. They, in turn, treated him with affection. Loki watched for a time longer, and many approached this _Tom_, this _Mr. Hiddleston_ with fondness and good humor. It was clear that he was a favorite among this band of professional lie-smiths.

Loki watched as these men, these _actors_, concluded their trade for the day. With a loud grating sound, one of the walls rolled to the side, opening the room to the outdoors. His double braced himself, as for battle, as they exited the play-area, and a moment later Loki realized why. Shouts of "Tom! Tom!" rang out from the crowd waiting outside. His not-king self smiled in a manner that Loki would have called "self-effacing" had it not been so foreign on his familiar face.

"Loki!" someone screamed. Even as this _Tom_ laughed, Loki scoured the mirror for the new voice. Tom reached an arm across another fanatic to claim a sheet of paper... with Loki's image on it? What madness was this? Tom scrawled a brief message on the gold shoulder of Loki's formal armor, and handed the sheet back to the young woman.

"Madness, indeed," Loki murmured, easing himself deeper in his chair. With a small magic he exchanged his armor for a soft tunic and pants and drew one foot up beneath his thigh. What strange connection was this? He had first thought the mirror paired them because of this man's ambition to rule; then because of their shared features. Was the true reason both simpler and more bizarre? This man _impersonated_ him? And was paid for, lauded for such?

It took some focus to direct the mirror some distance further in the past, but he was able to see this mortal play a role of Loki, yes, and interact with a Thor-mortal, too. It seemed that in this reality Loki was only an idea, a figment of another mortal's fertile imagination.

Loki watched the cloying adulation of his double's many "fans", and the gentle way the human welcomed them. It was appalling. It was disgusting. Clearly so, as his belly clenched each time another mortal called, "I love you, Tom!" and his not-self ducked his head and waved. How much would it take for this mortal to rule this realm with such adulation to start with?

But then, he had no desire to live a mortal life. Subject to infection, disease, age? How would this Tom have fared when his brother threw him from the Bifrost into an abyss? _falling, falling, falling so long, so long, days, years, eons, minutes, eternities, falling so long..._ Vulnerable to trivia such as weather, dependent on the good will of others for a livelihood? Needing so much, and unable to procure it but at great effort? "No," he told himself firmly. "I am myself, not this poor mortal flesh." He regarded that lowly mortal's existence in the mirror yet a while longer, however, the better to later remind himself of its shortcomings.

**Home, T = 11**

Even life as a member of one of the higher realms had requirements, however. Loki set the mirror aside for a moment to address those requirements. He unfolded himself from his chair, stretching his long legs as he did so. His jailers had fed him in Asgard's dungeon, but bathing had been deemed an unnecesary luxury. He ran his fingers through his lank hair, wrinkling his face in disgust as the oils coated his fingers.

His time of freedom had allowed his sorcerous powers to recharge, and he made full use of them to return himself to his normal, hygienic state. He examined his fingers and toes as he trimmed his nails. How long had it been since each of those appendages had been whole and unbroken? The Other had taken a perverse glee in the sound they made as his minions broke them and in letting them heal up only to break them again. He pressed a thumb into the skin of his thigh, watching as the slight pigment blanched away and returned, marveling in the lack of _pain, pain, sweet as pain, make you long for_ pain. He shook his head, and if the tremor traveled through most of his frame, then he had merely shaken his head too vigorously. This was not The Other's influence, not his voice. It was merely an echo looping endlessly through Loki's own mind.

The skin of his body was pale again, unmarred with a rainbow of bruises in varying states of healing. The Other had enjoyed that, too: decorating Loki's skin in the varied colors of injury, colors the Chitauri's greyish skin could not display. The trivial scrapes, cuts, abrasions and contusions that Earth's Meaningless Heroes had bestowed upon him had healed even before Loki had been returned to Asgard.

As he rose from his bath, Loki considered his continued use of the form the All-Father had given him. His birth form, his Jotun form, would not have displayed those injuries nearly as well. What would The Other have done to display his handiwork on Loki then? The water evaporated from his Aesir-pale skin and Loki shivered.


	3. Chapter 3

Your father is a murderer and a thief!"

—Laufey

**Home, T = 12**

Clothed once more, Loki contemplated his next steps. The mirror held promise, true; all the promise of all the universes. But even one such as he could age in the time it took to examine each world, each reality, for the point at which it diverged to his advantage. He ate as he considered. All his efforts thus far had been centered on worlds where he was Loki of Asgard, or Loki king… though that universe where he was a mortal pretending to be Loki and pretending to be king still astonished him. Perhaps he should direct his attentions instead to reality as it should have been, as it was always meant to be: Loki of Jotunheim, Loki Laufeyson, unstolen by Odin ChildThief.

His course now determined, Loki turned once more to the mirror, shaking his head in bemusement. Once out of his grasp, the mirror expanded visually with each step Loki took from it. From across the room, he could see a near-infinity of facets flashing with motion, with action, with life, as the mirror obscured his entire wall. As he approached it, the mirror shrank in size once more. Or rather, it remained the same size regardless of his shift in perspective — the size to be held in his two outstretched hands, whether it sat on his knees or across a room. Loki wondered idly what would happen if the mirror were taken to a yet larger area, such as a field, or open space itself. Would its perspective-wrenching qualities persist even there?

There would be no examining it minutely; any attempt to bring the mirror closer for a more detailed view merely resulted in a reduction in its apparent size. It was truly a marvel, but he wondered at the thought processes of those who created such a changeable thing.

The mirror flashed gold across its length and breadth as he grasped it once more. As Loki settled into a comfortable position on his lounge, he called up an image of Jotunheim as he remembered it. The sudden flash of blue blue blue had him dropping the mirror in an instant. It took several deep breaths and several minutes of checking the protective wards on Home before he could reassure himself that it was not The Other, not the Tesseract or the scepter. It was merely Jotunheim's slate-blue midday.

One more breath and he was ready to look at the mirror again. The blue had vanished. Instead, the facets seemed to reflect only portions of Home. Loki frowned and propped the mirror up against the lounge's left arm, moving himself back beyond arm's reach. New scenes appeared in the frame, changing continually, but though he tried to bring Jotunheim to the fore, the middle of the mirror remained a foggy blank. He put his hand to the mirror again and an image of Jotunheim swirled into view.

Well, that was vexing. The mirror required his constant contact to function. Loki settled himself more comfortably on the chaise and pulled the mirror within reach. At his touch, the mirror flared gold again before the frame settled on a kaleidoscope of shifting images and colors.

"Now," he murmured, "Let us see what would have happened had Odin not been a thief."

**Jotunheim 2, T = 12**

Immediately, the preponderance of the facets winked out, leaving only darkness. "What is this?" Loki breathed. "How can this be?" If this was the present, he must needs push back to the past to see what had precipitated this... this... extinction of his Jotun selves. He directed the mirror to himself as an infant, and many of the realities that had faded now reappeared.

He saw war between the Aesir and Jotnar, with enormous loss of life on each side. He saw Laufey-king engage Odin in battle and take his eye. Where once he might have tracked his father's progress (no, Odin's progress, your father, not mine), now he tracked Laufey's movements as he returned home.

Loki could not interpret the expression on the Frost Giant's face as he looked upon his babe. Was this compassion? Sorrow? Despair? Disgust? It was not the lapis blue of his face, nor the scribed lines thereon, nor the red of his eyes. No, it seemed that the emotions he felt—if indeed there were such—were simply too foreign for Loki to translate.

Laufey took the infant, wrapped with the barest cloth about him, and carried him to a central building. Its spires had probably had a certain heavy elegance before all the damage from the war. As it was, Laufey picked his way cautiously through fallen rubble and ice, the halls quiet but for the occasional silvery slithering sound of ice coursing down the walls. The child startled awake as Laufey set him on a central podium, but his parent left him there without a backward glance. The majority of the facets that had glowed with vitality flickered and went dark as Laufey walked from the hall.

A stifling pressure rose up through Loki's belly and the edges of his vision whited out. "What excuse could he have?" he roared. "Because I wassmall?" Seeing for himself what Odin had told him, that he had been abandoned by his parent, combined with his first memory of Laufey—ordering Loki's death—made him wish in some ways that he could go back and kill him all over again. "Yes, your death came by me, by the son of—" son of Odin, Loki had said that day, as he killed the parent who sired him and claimed Odin as his true father.

The babe's cries continued, unabated and uncomforted. "Race of monsters," he muttered, turning from the view in disgust. He no longer cared if there were realities in which he survived to his current age as Jotun. Would he have been as cruel, as careless, as his sire, had he done so? It was one thing to term himself monster in his shock of discovering his heritage; it would be quite another to give himself over to that depravity.

Loki smiled mirthlessly to himself. Son of Odin, he had termed himself, though he denied to Thor in the next moments that they were brothers. As God of Lies, he had always attempted to lie to all but himself (and, perhaps, Frigga, he could admit in the privacy of his mind). But where was the truth in this, and where the falsehood? Which father had he connived to kill, and which death had he accomplished? In his fury he had claimed both, neither, either. Which did he believe true? He could not lie convincingly without a truth to deviate from. Or did it even matter? Laufeyson, Odinson, Jotun, Aesir, no matter his choice, no matter his change of terms, he was himself, fitting in neither world and no world at all.

Loki released his hold on the reality displayed in the mirror, and his infant-self's cries ceased to assault his ears. Perhaps being Odin's true son, though second born, was not so loathsome after all.

**Asgard 2', T = 13**

Facets lit in gold all about the mirror's frame and then flickered in unison. In the weapons vault, Thor was once again bragging. "When I'mking, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all." His eyes shone with hero worship. "Just as you did, father."

Loki shook his head in disgust at Thor's hypocrisy. Gone mere days to earth, and he deplored his former desire to slaughter every being on Jotunheim? And castigated Loki for intending the same? How much Jotun blood was on perfect Thor's hands from that day in Jotunheim? How many Jotnar grew to adulthood parentless for Thor's aggression and folly?

"A wise king never seeks out war," Odin chided mildly, "but he must always be ready for it."

Odin moved to leave the weapons vault. Thor looked at Loki with fondness before running after his father to take his hand. "I'm ready, father!"

Loki-child, eyes full of tears, did not join him. "I will never be king," he whispered to the Casket of Ancient Winters.

Loki frowned. This was not the reality he had visited before. He spooled time backward and watched again. No, Loki-child had been smiling and cheerful, until Odin's comment about a wise king. Then the joy had fallen from his face as Frigga's roses after a frost. Loki knew he himself had not said those sorrowful words in his own history; rather, he had run after his father with Thor.

He scanned the mirror's other facets for the reality he had seen before. Instead of watching hundreds or thousands of variations of this reality, though, he now saw multiple copies of the same reality. All were eerily synchronized, and moving from one to another was as if he merely brushed a transparent veil from before his face. In each he found, however, the child whispered the same words. Never be king, never, never, king, king, never be king echoed through universe after universe. Something had pruned the branching realities. Or, he realized, it was perhaps more accurate to say something had bound the branching realities until they grew as one.

He ran time forward to watch Loki Odinson's single, singular reality. The cheerful child he had seen first in this reality never reappeared. Loki watched as his blond doppleganger grew in height and rebellion. The friendship with Thor that Loki had initially seen withered under Loki-child's scorn and bitterness. His resentment was clear in his behavior and his acid comments about Odin's "precious firstborn" and "perfect heir."

Loki's own childhood and youth had been spent in Thor's shadow, his contributions belittled and mocked, but Thor's affection, condescending as it was, had always been clear. Aesir-Loki's jealousy prevented that relationship, though, and Thor wanted nothing to do with his brother. Odin, too, clearly had no idea how to handle his mutinous offspring.

Loki watched as even the child's relationship with his mother—his true mother—became strained. Frigga's attempts to draw Loki-child to her side were rebuffed; time spent reading together and learning magics dwindled to nothing. Loki's throat grew tight as he contemplated what that loss meant to the child. Frigga's warmth and understanding had been his one refuge growing up in Asgard. Loki Friggason rejected her every overture, and criticized her affections as being less than what she offered Thor. Though he was Aesir and not Frost Giant, Loki of Asgard's life became infinitely colder as he progressively exiled his family from it.


	4. Chapter 4

"You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing."

—Steve Rogers

**Home, T = 24**

Loki shrugged himself free of Loki Odinson once more. His problems were none of Loki's concern. These changes so far back in the universes' subjective time, changes to his fundamental nature nature, nature, lose, lose were not what he wanted. A victory won by a Loki-in-name-only would be hollow indeed. He, Loki Laufeyson, stolen of Odin, reared by Frigga, must be seen to conquer. The triumph must be his, and his alone.

Sifting through Agent Barton's mind had shown him the identities of his likeliest opponents, should SHIELD be able to rally them. Though Barton knew little of Captain Rogers directly, it was clear Rogers would be asked to lead the Avengers team. The man was famous for his superior tactical and strategic thinking and his ability to motivate others to follow.

Loki spun time back slightly to view the events of the final battle in Manhattan. The Soldier had been the galvanizing force, and had rallied not only the Avengers but also New York's bewildered citizens and militias. His presence in Stuttgart led to Loki's apprehension, and later kept Loki from dealing solely with Thor (and would not that have been a joy, to manipulate his brother freely and without interruption?). Perhaps Loki should see about preventing his inclusion into their team. What made him so unique?

**Earth 597, T = 24**

Loki studied the soldiers selected as candidates for Project Rebirth, their identical dun-colored pants and once-white shirts dampened with sweat and coated with dust. Of them all, Rogers was the last he would have chosen. Barton had informed him of the soldier's pre-serum weakness, but Loki's imaginings had fallen far short of the reality. Rogers was a head shorter than the other men, his chest, arms and legs as undeveloped as a child's.

To Loki's amusement, the night before the procedure Dr. Erskine attempted to reassure Rogers with encouraging words and alcohol. The two men faced each other in the empty barracks, seated on thin-mattressed cots.

"Whatever happens tomorrow," Erskine said earnestly, "you must promise me one thing. That you will stay who you are. Not a perfect soldier. But. A good man." He tapped Rogers firmly in his sternum, and Loki fully expected Rogers to be knocked back from the force of it.

"To the little guys," Rogers toasted.

"No, wait, wait. What am I doing?" Erskine snatched the glass back from Rogers' grasp. "No, you have procedure tomorrow."

After Erskine left, Steve slept fitfully. What a shame, Loki thought smugly. Even this weakling had deserved a last drink. He watched silently as Rogers' lifetime of accumulated injuries, infections, and stresses combined with his uncertainty over the next day's procedure. His strainedbreathing became more strident and then ceased entirely.

There was no procedure the next day, or the next. After Steve Rogers' untimely death, Colonel Phillips ignored Dr. Erskine's protests and insisted that they use his own choice for candidate. Hodge survived the procedure only to be put down violently when he transformed into some kind of raging, enormous monster. After Phillips' second choice died in the chamber, Project Rebirth was shelved indefinitely.

Meanwhile, the war ground on. Johann Schmidt amassed an arsenal of weapons based on the Tesseract. Dr. Zola and Schmidt together continued research on captured Allied soldiers, occasionally creating a monstrosity who briefly assisted in their cause. Tesseract powered bombs razed most of the American Eastern Seaboard. Hydra, beneath the veil of Nazism, beneath the veil of German rebirth, continued to expand throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. German U-boats powered by Tesseract weapons interdicted use of the Atlantic. German troops landed on U.S. Soil and vaporized defenders with blasts of glowing blue. Schmidt lived on, and on, and on, and became dictator of the world.

Loki spooled time forward, watching as frail sparks of freedom were extinguished again and again. By the time he reached Earth of the "present day," superior weaponry, technology, and fear had made Earthers a subjugated people. How tedious, Loki thought as he released that reality, to conquer a people already ground beneath another's boot.

**Home, T = 27**

Clearly the soldier was some sort of nexus in Earth's history. Eliminating him completely was undesirable, but what if he were ever-so-slightly different? Barton had described the Captain as upright and honorable to a (complete lack of) fault. If Loki could find a reality where the good Captain was not quite so good, then perhaps most of history would continue as it should, but with Loki's eventual victory with the Chitauri. Loki scanned through a number of universes until he found a likely candidate

**Earth 3010, T = 81**

"You're not really thinking of picking Rogers, are you?" After a plethora of realities, Loki was well able to home in on Colonel Phillips' familiar voice.

"I am more than just thinking about it. It is a clear choice," Erskine responded mildly.

Loki watched the soldiers go through their calisthenics. He had watched this set of exercises a thousand times, and more. Rogers had not changed noticeably in all those iterations.

"Then throw me a bone," Phillips remonstrated. "Hodge passed every test we gave him. He's big, he's fast. He obeys orders, he's a soldier."

"He's a bully," Erskine returned.

"And you think Rogers isn't? Kid might not be strong, but he's smart, and got a mouth on 'im. Way he lays into the others makes any drill sergeant sound like Glinda the good witch."

Loki pricked his ears at this exchange. This reality seemed promising enough that Loki let it play out, watching Rogers undergo the transformation to super-soldier. Contrary to what Barton had told him, this Captain America never went on tour to sell War Bonds. He also flatly refused to be the Strategic Science Reserve's pet project.

He enlisted, and advanced quickly through the ranks through a combination of bravery, pig-headedness, and ruthless ambition. He rescued Allied soldiers, fought and defeated Johann Schmidt, and parlayed those victories into promotion after promotion. By the time the war ended, he held the rank of general.

In 1948, General America was appointed to the cabinet position Secretary of War. In 1950, a series of freak accidents took the lives of the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, and Secretary of the Treasury, leaving General America as President of the United States. During his term, he suppressed the Congressional vote for the 22nd Amendment which would have limited the president to two terms in office. He won re-election in 1952. He won re-election in 1956. By 1960, elections had degenerated into nothing more than a sham. General America lived on, and on, and on, and continued to rule fascist America through its unofficial fourth governmental branch known as SHIELD.

These people had already been beaten into submission. Would they scream in fear when he suddenly appeared? Would they cower before him when he demanded they kneel? No, it seemed they were already inured to such events. What enjoyment could be brought from ruling such sheep?

**Home, T = 81**

Altering the super soldier's past had proved useless. Who knew that such a bland man could be the pivot on which so much of history turned? Perhaps another bland man would prove a better target. Dr. Banner, when he was not that obscene monstrosity, was a singularly benign presence.

And Loki owed him some recompense for the way he had taken him by an ankle and flung him from side to side, bashing him over and again into the concrete floor. That thing had kept him pinned in Stark's ridiculous tower. Preventing that Hulk's existence might be the least of the revenges Loki could visit upon him, but without his presence Loki could have better protected the Tesseract, his portal, his victory. But you're going to lose...

It had been several days since the echo of Coulson's voice had intruded on Loki's thoughts. He found it, if not soothing, then at least familiar. "I am not going to lose, you fool," he argued with the dead man. "I have it well within me to win..."

Loki considered for a moment. Which was worse: arguing with a ghost? Or arguing with himself? Loki had always kept his own company, interspersed with time with books or scrolls or Frigga, but for how many months had he immured himself in this small pocket dimension? The Other's influence had faded over the preceding months, but how long could he isolate himself before he was more insane than even his time with the Other had made him?

It didn't matter. What mattered now was eliminating Banner's alter ego, the one he so naively referred to as "the Other Guy," as if he were not part of Banner's own nature.

His thoughts were too discordant to focus the mirror, however, and the facets refused to settle under his palms and reveal a central reality. He paused to contemplate the kind of world to choose, but gave up the effort after mere moments. Foolishness. He could not possibly have predicted the outcomes in any of the universes he had seen thus far; why waste the time speculating on what might appear next? Instead, he would simply find a "present-day" that did not contain the Hulk

**Earth 2149, T = 82**

The pounding of feet echoed down a narrow alleyway just as the mirror cleared. Loki's jaw dropped as he watched Captain America chase down a civilian, subdue him in a flying tackle, and begin gnawing on him. The other Avengers circled their leader impatiently, lesser pride-members waiting for the the dominant male to finish his meal before partaking. As Loki had expected, Hulk was not among them.

He had not expected, however, that these Heroes of Earth would be in poor repair. Greyish flesh hung loosely from gashes in their vibrant costumes. Eyes seemed exposed in their sockets, but nevertheless displayed an eerie awareness of their surroundings and a very unpleasant alertness. Had Loki not seen them moving under their own power, he would have thought them many weeks dead.

Appalled, he released his grip on the reality. And the Aesir had called Frost Giants monsters? What did they know of it? Had they ever seen horrors such as these? Truly, these humans—or remnants of humans—were worse than the Jotnar had ever been. Perhaps being a Jotun cuckoo in Odin's nest was not so hideous a fate as he had believed.

**Earth 20476, T = 83**

"If you're sure..." The mirror's focus expanded from Banner's floppy brown hair and purple shirt to encompass a laboratory.

"Nothing is certain, Dr. Banner," Dr. Kronus replied. "The math seems sound. The machine should function to take you back to a time before the G-Bomb incident, and you should be able to prevent your transformation into the Hulk."

Bruce Banner removed his wire-framed glasses to look more closely the other scientist. "And if I can't?"

Kronus thinned his lips before he delivered the disappointing news. "The machine will function again. It is resilient enough for that. But," he gestured minutely, turning his palms up, "the stresses on the human body would be too great for a second trip."

Loki yawned as they exchanged warnings and reassurances, checkpoints and verifications. Science! So boring. So very, very linear and plain. Dancing to another's rules, as if following a set of "laws" could make any progress into undiscovered territory.

To skip the dull bits, he spooled Banner's subjective time, during which Banner travelled backward in absolute time, forward within Loki's subjective time, smugly confident that merely considering the causalities and paradoxes in that action alone would give the mortal mind a migraine.

He returned to normal time flow after the machine functioned as expected, and Banner was able to prevent his transformation into the Hulk. That would do nicely. No Hulk-shaped leg-iron to keep him from his victory with the Chitauri. One human seemed to have been killed in the process, but after all Banner's whinging about being a monster, Loki fully expected that he would consider that collateral damage a small enough price.

But instead Banner was grieving over this man, this Rick Jones, as if his miserable life were more valuable than Banner's own, than Banner's freedom from his monster.

Let him go, Loki whispered. Think of the good you can do, unshackled by that monster.

Banner lifted his eyes from where he held Jones' body, looking directly into Loki's eyes as if Loki were with him at the Gamma Site in New Mexico. "I will not. I don't know who you are, but I will not trade another man's life for my own. And definitely not just so I can live the way I want."

Banner shook his head, floppy brown curls bouncing as he did. "I will not."


	5. Chapter 5

"I remember a shadow, living in the shade of your greatness."

—Loki

**Home, T = 84**

Loki reeled back from where he had just seen Banner attempt the time machine again and re-create himself as the Hulk. He hardly knew where to direct his thoughts—to the foolishness of Banner who chose not to be free of his monster inside, or to the fact that Banner had clearly addressed him directly. How was that possible?

Loki held that thought as he directed the mirror to moments when Banner or even the Hulk had seen things no one else had. To his astonishment, there were many. The Hulk saw ghosts. He saw astral projections. He saw people walking through their homes while their bodies lay in comas miles away. He saw through illusions. He resisted hypnotic suggestions and subliminal programming. He resisted mind control and thought projections. He was in fact, Loki thought with shock, the being the most thoroughly grounded in reality, seen and oft-unseen, that Loki had ever encountered.

Still, Banner's awareness of otherwise invisible influences aside, it seemed clear that Loki could affect the other realities. Cold washed up Loki's body from his stomach to his ears, followed by a hot flush. He had whispered in another reality. Had his child self heard his cynical words?

**Asgard 2', T = 85**

"Do the Frost Giants still live?" Loki's blond self asked. He longed to reassure the child, his other self, that he had not committed genocide on his people. Instead, Loki bit his tongue before he could respond. He was here to gather information on changes he might have made previously, not make new ones.

Thor interrupted, "When I'm king, I'll hunt the monsters down and slay them all." His eyes shone with hero worship. "Just as you did, father."

"A wise king never seeks out war," Odin chided mildly, "but he must always be ready for it."

As Odin moved to leave the weapons vault, Loki strained to hear even a hint, an echo, of what he had whispered before. He detected nothing, but he saw Loki-child's face fall in cadence with the words Loki remembered saying as he told him he would—

"—never be king," the child whispered, standing alone by the Casket of Ancient Winters as his father and brother left hand in hand.

Loki watched, mirror in hand, as Loki-child stood empty-handed in reality after identical reality. Was this what the legends had meant about affecting realities? Loki spooled time backward to Odin's tale of the fight against the Frost Giants. Was there some way he could prevent this change? Reverse it?

He attempted to insert himself into the reality he watched before his words affected his doppelganger. He hoped his mere presence in the reality might prevent his words from influencing Loki-child, but he saw the boy's face crumple into despair just as it had before. He could not stop his former self from saying the words, and he could not interpose himself between those words and the child's vulnerable mind; there was nothing he could grasp, nothing he could block.

If he could not prevent the change, perhaps he could mitigate it with later changes. He whispered encouragement to Loki Odinson, that he was loved, though second. That he might never be king, but that he would always be son and brother. The child showed no evidence that he heard, and his words sounded muted to his own ears. He was minded of days spent conversing in Frigga's solar, when every sound was gentled and softened by the tapestries covering stone walls, the thick carpets layered on the floors. Here, as then, his words were muffled somehow as if the vibrations were being dampened or were being pushed into the reality against great resistance.

Loki changed tacks, directing his words to Thor and Odin. When Thor turned to go after his father, Loki urged, "Take your brother's hand." There was no reaction, and his words did not echo in the stone chamber.

As Odin intoned that only one of them sit on the throne, Loki added, "But you are both my sons," looking searchingly into his adopted father's face. He felt tears starting in his own eyes. "Say it," he implored. He clenched his fists, raging against his father's inability to hear Loki-child's need. "Say it!" he roared.

**Home, T = 88**

Loki released his hold on Loki Odinson's reality. It appeared that his changes to this reality, and all the ones he had inadvertently merged together, had been made permanent. He could not prevent them or un-make them, and his attempts to make further changes in that world all failed. He watched as the child's spirit was crushed again and again. He slumped back in his seat and released the mirror. There was nothing more he could do for that child. It was his nature now.

It's in your nature, your nature, your nature, gonna lose, gonna lose Loki's body was numb, but his mind kept racing, memories of Coulson's last words intruding and re-circling over and over. The bitterness, the loneliness, the sense of inferiority, were now ingrained in Loki Odinson. And he, Loki Laufeyson, had caused it.

What chilled his bones more than a Frost Giant's touch, what closed his throat more than Thor's grip about it, was the thought that sometime, somewhere, someone had manipulated and pruned his realities. Had some dimensional traveler dropped poisonous words into Loki's own ear, warping his nature all unbeknownst to him? Was he now limited, as Coulson had implied?

He needed, he wanted... someone to talk to, he realized; another mind, limited though it might be, to bend to this problem, another perspective to lay alongside his. It would be easiest to exploit a mind he already knew, which limited his options, or would, had he not been in possession of all the options in the universe.

Well. Barton had had an extremely practical turn of thought, and a flair for strategic thinking as well. He had been useful. Perhaps Loki should simply go and reacquire his former minion.

**Earth 199999', T = 90**

Loki had feared it would be difficult to re-find "his" Barton without the scepter's bond, but he had feared to re-establish a bond with the scepter, and thus with the Other, even more. Using the mirror's assistance, his Barton had been easy enough to find. To avoid repeating his debacle with Banner, Loki appeared while Barton slept.

Agent Barton twisted restlessly in his bed, occasionally muttering under his breath. His powerful arms were flung over his head, but occasionally reached up as if to grasp or perhaps fend off an attacker.

"Agent Barton," Loki said mildly. His words were muted, as if the furnishings were absorbing the sound.

Barton's hand immediately swept down to cover his sternum. "No," he muttered clearly. "No, I won't."

"Agent Barton," Loki continued, "I have need of you, and your heart." Even in the small bedchamber, his words did not resonate.

"NO!" Barton shouted, bolting upright in bed, eyes open and staring sightlessly, chest heaving.

"Barton, I'm not here to hurt you," Loki soothed.

Barton blinked, then rubbed his face firmly with both hands. "And they want me to take meds." He chuffed a brief laugh, stood and walked to the bathroom, bracing his palms on either side of the sink, hanging his head down toward his chest.

Loki gasped as Barton strode directly through him, showing no sign that he had detected Loki's presence at all. It was most disconcerting. "Barton, listen to me."

Hawkeye ran the faucet briefly and splashed water over his face before staring into his tired eyes in the mirror. "If I couldn't wake up..." He shook his head, scattering droplets across the mirror and distorting his reflection. His glance shifted to a small orange bottle beside the sink. Barton took it up, his large palm covering all but the top edge of the white cap. "I'll never be free of him, will I? Never stop seeing him. And they'll never stop seeing him when they look at me." His thumb separated the lid from the cylindrical bottle with a faint pop, and he upended the bottle into his other palm. Perhaps thirty small, chalky-blue disks filled his hand. His head drooped down again as if his neck were too weak to hold it upright.

Loki felt his face fall in unfamiliar lines, his gut tightening. This was another unexpected result. He had no more seen a victim of the staff's control than he had of the staff's impalement. Barton was a lesser creature, true, but this was not the reward he deserved for his unwilling man before him was less than the one he had known. He had thinned substantially, and his round eyes were both red-rimmed and bloodshot.

"Agent Barton," he attempted. "I will not harm you." He considered a moment. "Not more than I have, at any rate." His words should have echoed off the ceramic in the bathroom. Instead, he heard clearly the tinny plunk each of the small pills made as Barton tipped them into the commode.

Barton returned to sit on the side of his bed, reaching beneath the pillow to expose a small handgun. His fingers traced over it, once, twice, as if to reassure himself of its presence. With a groan, he collapsed sideways onto the bed, his feet dangling to the floor, one arm tucked beneath the pillow under his head. "Morning soon," he murmured. "Can get up soon."

"Barton, rest," Loki entreated. "Dream of me no longer."

Loki waited until Barton fell into another fitful sleep and began dreaming again. Once more he seemed to struggle to resist Loki's control, and once more he startled himself awake on a shout. The cycle repeated itself before morning and on the night after and on the night after that. Barton never seemed to notice Loki's presence, and Loki's words never changed Barton's behavior, either for good or for ill.

It seemed Loki would need to search farther afield for assistance.

**Earth 616, T = 97**

Loki tracked the action through the mirror as another Clint Barton walked a run-down city street. "Clint! Clint!" Loki felt his eyebrows lift in surprise. Barton was known here, in this ramshackle area, but not as Hawkeye, one of Earth's elite forces. He was merely Clint.

And nothing more, Loki saw, as a tall, bald man with a luxuriant handlebar moustache turned easily from threatening a mother with her two children to warning off Barton. "Bro, back off, Bro. This not concern you." Even through the AllSpeak, Loki heard the thug's broken use of the language.

"He's kicking us out, Clint," the mother explained as her baby's arms circled her neck. A group of thugs wearing matching burgundy uniforms appeared to be "assisting" the young lady in the process of moving, if by assisting one could mean disgorging her apartment's contents onto the dirty street. Loki sneered at the men's floppy pants and zip-front jackets. What sort of master suited his minions alike in such soft, useless garments?

"Is good, Bro," asserted the bald giant. "She not pay new rent. She gone."

"Triple?" the woman exclaimed, furious. "You're tripling our rent?"

"Bro, don't matter, bro," the mustachioed thug insisted, brandishing papers before Barton's face. "Is in lease. She sign."

As Clint remonstrated with the large man, Loki considered. Perhaps he could assist Barton in this reality, if not in Loki's "home" dimension. The thugs pretending to be movers were prating about rents and money and business. Perhaps he could make use of that.

"These men are unworthy to control these dwellings."He watched the considering look grow on Barton's face. "You should do it. You could do better, surely."

"I could do better," Barton muttered under his breath. To the young mother, he said, "He owns the building, Simone. Kinda think he can."

"As could you, quite as easily," Loki continued, warming to his theme. "You, Clint Barton, could do this by yourself."

"I can do this myself," Barton said quietly as he walked away. "I don't need anyone's help. I can handle this on my own."

Loki was surprised when Barton quickly amassed a large amount of money. His time on Earth had shown him the value of such paper bills, but he had not thought Barton had such in his possession. He watched proudly as Barton took the bag to the gambling den where the thugs' masters did business. Barton would accomplish something good, and it was at Loki's bidding, though he knew it not.

The fight that broke out in the "casino" took him by surprise.

As did the gunshot, and the ridiculous attack on the dog.

And the resulting attempts on Barton's life. Loki tried to whisper in Barton's mind again, urging caution, prudence, consideration, but his words had no effect. Just as in Loki Odinson's home reality, it seemed Loki's interference was possible once only, and never again.

With nausea twisting his gut, Loki watched Barton's life spin further and further out of control and into ruin. Once again he had unwittingly assisted in creating disaster.

**Home, T = 100**

Loki released the mirror with a resigned sigh. It seemed ironically fitting that his attempts to help Agent Barton were of no value in your nature, lose, lose. When had this not been the case? In Nornheim, when he and Thor were outnumbered a hundred to one, he veiled them in smoke to ease their escape. And what had it yielded him? Nothing but scorn. What had Thor's words been? "Some do battle; others just do tricks."

He firmed his resolve. He would not be mocked. Enough of this weak-minded desire for company, or for amends for any harm caused. He was made to rule, and made for victory. It was time he went about ensuring that victory.


	6. Chapter 6

"You think this madness will end with your rule?"

—Thor

**Home, T = 100**

Agent Romanov had shut down his portal, cutting his army off from their source. Somehow, when the scepter's ultra-low frequency vibrations and gamma radiation were making the rest of the team descend into argument and strife, she remained a voice of reason. She had even been able to resist the scepter's bellicose influence long enough to manipulate it with her bare hands. Without her presence, would the other Avengers have engaged in open physical battle with each other even before Barton attacked the Helicarrier, preventing their defense of Earth?

Taking the mirror, he began to scan for a recent past that did not include a Black Widow.

**Earth 1090, T = 100**

Loki arrived in the basement of the PEGASUS facility in a wash of blue energy from the Tesseract. Guards, researchers, and support staff all turned as one to face him. Barton and Fury approached his position with hands held inoffensively low. "Sir, please put down the spear," Fury ordered in a carrying voice. The rest of the humans moved to the edges of the room.

Loki looked to the scepter for a moment and then thrust it forward, shooting a blue blast at the speaker. Fury and Barton reacted in unison, but this time instead of Barton pushing Fury out of the bolt's path, they dove in opposite directions. Simultaneously, the workers who had fanned out on the room's periphery raised weapons if they had them, made improvised weapons if they did not, and rushed Loki's position.

The guards concentrated fire on Loki's neck, taking him down to the floor. The moment he was prone, the other humans rushed him. Each pinned Loki to the walkway's grating, one with a knee on Loki's thigh, another by a knee pressed into his shoulder. A human sat on each of his shins as others came and held him down. Those who held pieces of iron rebar and steel scaffolding impaled Loki through his torso, pinning him to the steel grating as an insect to a specimen paper. Barton and Fury recovered from their tumbling rolls and approached Loki at a run. Together they pulled the scepter from Loki's hands. Then, their feet on Loki's chest, they used the scepter to cut Loki's head from his neck.

Fury kicked the head away and Barton, despite the scepter's lopsided form, threw it like a lance and pinned the Loki's head to the concrete. Everyone turned to look at Fury. He nodded once. "Good work, people," they all said in unison. Loki watched as the Tesseract blue faded from his double's sightless eyes.

**Home, T = 101**

Stunned, Loki scanned further back in that reality. There was very little conversation. Speech, reactions, and movement were eerily synchronized. Information was rarely conveyed verbally except over long distance connections. The more he watched, the more convinced Loki became that the humans of this Earth communicated through some sort of group mind.

They might as well be insects in truth, he mused. A world of humans, millions upon millions strong, all fighting with one mind, with one will? There might be some weakness to them, some way they could be conquered (if he destroyed a large enough number of them at once, perhaps) but how incredibly dull it would be to exist in such a place.

He narrowed his eyes at the mirror. He had had quite enough of near-sentient artifacts when he dealt with the Tesseract and its capricious "behavior." In this latest universe there had been no Black Widow, true, but this was not a reality where her absence was what made the difference. The variety of realities he had thus far seen reminded him strongly of legends and myths of tricksters. How one must needs define a wish or request very precisely indeed, or risk a result which met the letter of the request but contradicted all aspects of its spirit. It reminded him, in truth, of dealing with himself. Though there was no tangible evidence that the mirror was playing tricks on him, manipulating him, was aware, he would be more precise in his directives in the future.

**Earth 614, T = 101**

Loki was fairly certain the German soldiers had not set or started the fire deliberately as they attacked Stalingrad. Regardless of their intentions, however, the residential building seemed to catch fire like a dry pine branch, flames licking from the foundations to the upper stories in a sparking rush. The heat was intense, pushing any potential rescuers back even before the repeated explosions from within. In this 1928 Russian winter it seemed likely the residents were heating with kerosene. Among those trapped and killed was a child who would have grown to be the Red Room's most potent Black Widow, Natalia Alianovna Romanova.

The Red Room trained many Black Widows, but none ever defected to the West. After Tony Stark's public announcement that he was Iron Man, SHIELD insinuated a bodyguard into his inner circle to monitor his erratic behavior. The SHIELD agent was competent, but not an expert hacker. When Anton Vanko's subverted the War Machine suit to destroy Tony Stark, the agent could not wrest back control of the computer systems. Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes was within the War Machine suit, helpless to intervene, as it killed his friend, Tony Stark. Months later, the Avengers rallied to repulse the Chitauri, but with no hero to intercept it, the nuclear missile fired on the World Security Council's orders destroyed Loki. And most of Manhattan.

**Home, T = 104**

Loki paused, nonplussed. To find that Agent Romanov's actions had been pivotal in Tony Stark's survival was a shock. He had scoured Agent Barton's brain for information on all the Avengers, true, but he had honestly thought the Black Widow of minor importance. Yes, she had skills in infiltration and interrogation, but Loki had been planning to fight a war, his army against almost undefended civilians. In his experience (admittedly, most of it fighting alongside Thor), once a battle had begun, the time for finesse and subterfuge had for the most part passed.

Perhaps that said more of his allies, and their biases, than of reality. How many times had his stealth, his sorcery, his distraction been of use to Thor in battle? How many times had he saved their lives through guile and trickery? Yet Thor never recognized those actions' worth, and instead focused on his own strength of arms. Loki paused to laugh mockingly at himself. She had caused him to underestimate her yet again, just as Thor had undervalued Loki for so many years.

Loki pondered, idly winding time back and forth amongst similar realities. Removing Tony Stark from the equation was tempting, but every time that happened—childhood accident, kidnapping attempt turned murder, palladium poisoning, jealous husband—the scenario ended with a mushroom cloud below the Tesseract portal. It seemed even the smallest changes were having cascading effects in Loki's subjective present. He needed to focus his efforts nearer to the time of his eventual victory to better curtail the ripples of unintended consequences.

He watched his home reality as Stark concluded threatening Loki by pointing out that Loki had "pissed off" one more person: one named Phil. He scrolled backward in time and saw Fury motivate the chastised Stark and Rogers with a blatant, manipulative reference to Coulson's death. Loki found himself agreeing with Stark on one point: Coulson had been a fool to attempt to hold Loki in detention by himself. Even without the knowledge that Loki could use magic to remove himself from the prison at any moment, what right had that mortal to attack a higher being? Perhaps he should reward Coulson's foolishness by letting him live—live and see the failure of all he had worked for.

**Earth 199,998, T = 107**

"The humans think us immortal. Should we test that?" In the detention level of the Helicarrier, Loki Fratricide's hand paused over the control that would send Thor falling miles and miles to his death. There was no doubt in his mind, no consideration. He intended to kill Thor. The pause was purely for Thor's benefit. Did he wonder? In those last seconds before Loki's hand struck the button, did he hope that Loki would relent? Hope that Loki's apparent threat was merely "having a bit of fun" at Thor's expense? Loki's vulpine grin widened, until he heard the clatter of his escort's body hitting the metal deck.

"Move away, please," inoffensive Coulson instructed, his enormous weapon incongruous with all Loki had assumed of him. He allowed the mortal to have his bravado, and his last words, even as he veiled his true self in invisibility and stepped away from his illusory duplicate.

"You like this?" Agent Coulson continued, advancing on Loki's former position. "We started working on the prototype after you sent The Destroyer. Even I don't know what it does. Do you want to find out?"

Loki shimmered back into visibility and swung the head of the scepter like a club into the back of Coulson's head. The SHIELD agent's unconscious body briefly took flight before it skidded to a halt on the deck plates. "Not particularly," Loki informed him.

With one last taunting look at Thor, Loki released the containment chamber into freefall down to the earth below. Barton had been knocked unconscious somewhere in the depths of the Helicarrier, so Loki Fratricide left him behind. Surprising no one at all, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers picked up their argument right where the attack on the Helicarrier had interrupted it. This time, Stark still wore the Iron Man suit.

The resulting scuffle ended only when the combined efforts of Fury, Coulson, and Romanov were able to override the sound of their bickering and convince them that they were acting like children. From the comfort of Home, Loki noted the time it had taken for the humans to shake free from the scepter's effects. He himself had been exposed to the scepter's power for far longer, and far more directly, but the only target for his aggression had been the Chitauri (unwise, oh so unwise) and then the humans themselves.

Eventually, the humans refocused and retrieved the data from the Tesseract search Stark and Banner had been running. The remaining Avengers flew to Stark's monument to his ego, but the communications blackout and delay proved critical. The World Security Council was unable to find a closer launch platform whose commanders it could undermine, so there was no nuclear strike on Manhattan. By the time Stark, Romanov, and Barton arrived, the portal to Chitauri space had been open for the better part of an hour.

The Avengers were crushed by the overwhelming forces of the Chitauri. Finding himself without allies, Thor withdrew to Asgard to plan their own defense. With no desire for it himself, Loki presented the Tesseract to The Other, as promised. In thanks, The Other speared Loki through the chest with his scepter.


	7. Chapter 7

"Your ambition is little, born of childish need."

—The Other

**Home, T = 107**

Loki watched his body crumple to the roof of Stark Tower. lose, going to lose, it's your nature, gonna lose This was the second time he had watched his other self die at the point of his own scepter, and it was even less pleasant this time. The hive-mind humans had used their best guess that decapitation would be quick and effective, and that separating the head from the body would prevent any healing. They had been right, as it happened.

The Other had no such desire for a quick kill. He prolonged Loki Fratricide's suffering with the glee of a sadistic child tormenting a recaptured pet. Loki's chest went tight, his breath coming in short pants as his hands clenched the mirror's frame. He did not feel the soft chaise beneath him as he began shaking. Instead he was back in that twilight world, alone with the Chitauri, alone with The Other, powerless, without exit or leverage or strategy. His death and the Chitauri's victory over Earth played out before his unseeing eyes. Havoc and terror and destruction were all they accomplished before abandoning the Earth for the worlds they had desired, leaving Loki's body decomposing on the top of the Tower.

When Loki returned to awareness of his current self, long hours later, it was bit by bit. A leg too long unmoved protested with pins and needles. The herb-fresh air of Home replaced the chitinous stink of the Chitauri. The soft, muffled quiet of his own dwelling drowned out the crack and slither of constant Chitauri in-fighting. He pried fingers long-since numb with cramping away from their grip on the mirror. With a last look at Loki Fratricide's remains, he set the mirror from him. He flexed his hands to return some sensation to them, then ran them over his itching face, wiping away the salt grit of dried tears.

He had always known the Chitauri would betray him. He had simply planned on being more guileful or more agile when the time came to renegotiate or part ways. He had not expected that sudden strike. His lips thinned in a mirthless smile. Perhaps that was the consequence of being known as Loki Trickster; his reputation preceded him, and his erstwhile ally had known to strike first, before Loki could twist free of him.

Loki took some small time to compose himself once more. His lost hours spent reliving his torments with the Chitauri had shaken him to the ground. He was not some puling mortal to be awakened in his sleep by past horrors. His memories did not rise up and choke him to immobility even in the sanctuary of Home. He was a god, and would behave as one.

Still, he felt some measure of sympathy for the suffering Barton was undergoing. Mortals were so fragile. Who would have thought that simply wrapping his mind and body in the scepter's icy control for a few days would cause such lingering effects? Well, Loki might have thought it, having been in close proximity to the scepter and its effects for those brief years, those interminable, endless days with The Other.

Something pulled at the back of his mind. In the midst of the …unpleasantness …of the most recent reality, he had seen some detail that was simply wrong. As he went about, changing sweat-damp clothes for clean, feeding his tired body, he allowed his brain to tease at the puzzle. He stretched, trying to loosen muscles that had all but seized in terror as he watched other-Loki's torture and death.

He paused. Was that it? Had he seen...?

He returned to the mirror. The latest reality's images were fresh in his mind. There was no need to jab at those recent wounds. Instead, he directed the mirror to his own reality, the one in which he had found Agent Barton before. He spooled time forward gently, like silken thread between his fingers. If he was right, he had only one opportunity. He must needs be correct.

He watched Agent Coulson's last words to Director Fury, his death, and his body's dissolution into energy in the morgue.

This would be perfect. Agent Barton, with his own personal issues and history and trauma, was too problematic. According to Barton's information, Agent Coulson was ruthlessly logical, calm, and practical. He might resist the idea at first, but given the choice between some sort of an afterlife and final death, Loki had little doubt what any mortal would choose.

Most importantly, Loki had already taken him. Just not yet.

**Earth 199999, T = 114**

Loki laughed once more as Thor rushed the illusion of past-Loki escaping and instead imprisoned himself in the glass cell. "Are you ever notgoing to fall for that?" his past self mocked, and he agreed with the sentiment wholeheartedly. Thor: ever feeling, ever rushing to act, ever leading with his heart.

"The humans think us immortal. Should we test that?" Past-Loki's hand paused over the control Fury had showed him, taunting Thor with this control over his life or death. This time Loki watched Thor's face. His brother clearly believed that he would die if the chamber fell, and just as clearly hoped that Loki would not drop him. After all their years together, what had Loki done to earn such desperate trust? Or, more aptly, what had Thor seen that allowed him to trust Loki again and again?

The last member of Loki's escort team fell to the decking like scythed corn. Agent Coulson's enormous weapon did not waver as he calmly instructed Loki to move aside. Loki inserted himself invisibly into the scene, careful to stay out of past-Loki's line of sight, and waited for the perfect moment to act. Loki's illusory self stepped away from the switch that would end Thor's existence, leaving invisible past-Loki to move behind Coulson and strike, impaling the mortal so strongly with the scepter that it lifted the smaller man to his toes.

As Thor shouted his denial, past-Loki shook the dying Coulson off the scepter and dropped the containment chamber off the Helicarrier.

There was a pause, a moment, and Loki steeled himself to again hear those words that had mocked him these many months.

Past-Loki turned to leave, only to be caught by the dying man's voice. "You're gonna lose," Coulson said, his normal soft tenor rougher than before.

"Am I?" Past-Loki challenged.

"It's in your nature," Coulson confirmed.

nature, nature, in your nature, lack conviction, conviction, gonna lose, lose lose lose Loki lost some moments of time and was startled back when Coulson shot past-Loki through a bulkhead.

When Director Fury came through the door, Loki had pulled the mind, will, and intellect of Agent Coulson from the body dying on the deckplates. Loki clutched a bloody Agent Coulson to his side, veiled with him under an illusion of invisibility. Together, they watched as Fury crouched over a dying Coulson who half sat sprawled against a wall. Vainly Fury urged his friend to stay awake, to live. Together, they heard Coulson speak his last words: "It's okay, boss. This was never going to work... if they didn't have something … to..." Together they watched as Agent Coulson was pronounced dead and the body was taken away.

Coulson stared at the smear of blood where his back had impacted the wall. The pool where he had bled out was tracked and cross-tracked with bloody shoe prints and drag marks. "Asgardian. Bastard," he said lowly, "...killed me."

"So it would appear, Agent Coulson." With an overdramatic twist of his hand, he repaired Coulson's suit, returning it to its whole and pristine condition. "Isn't that better? Barton was always, hm, amused at the care you took of your suits."

At Agent Barton's name, Coulson straightened fractionally. Had the man not been pressed to his side, Loki doubted he would have noticed. "What do you want, Loki?"

Loki widened his eyes in a show of innocence. "Why, to talk. Is that not what you mortals do? And your SHIELD? Talk instead of fight?"

Loki allowed Coulson to push himself out of Loki's grip. The man twitched his cuffs, first left, then right, until a precise half-inch of pale blue sleeve was exposed beyond the hem of his black jacket. "What do you want to discuss?" The man appeared more composed with each moment that passed.

The dark paths between worlds opened at Loki's mental request, marking the route he would walk back Home. He took the agent's elbow in his hand. "Let us talk about conviction," he said, as the folds of space closed around them.


	8. Chapter 8

"The Chitauri are coming. Nothing can change that."

—Loki

**Home, T = 115**

Loki had long since learned the secrets of walking the World Tree at will, but of late most of his voyages had been in his spirit form, leaving his body behind. The journeys to and from Earth, the precisely crafted illusions there, and the frisson of danger at having to elude not only all the humans but their electronic surveillance and his past self left him with an elation singing in his veins.

Home looked smaller with two people in it. It had never been designed to be more than a bolt-hole, a temporary haven. It made Loki realize what a solitary existence he had been living. One chaise, one table, multiple bookshelves, but one conveniently located chair. Agent Coulson's eyes flicked from item to item, no doubt cataloging instruments of mayhem as well as routes of escape. The human was recovering from the shock of seeing his death and gathering confidence by the minute.

"Welcome to my home," Loki offered. "If you must attempt violence, please use something other than the books. Some of them are very old and not up to the challenge."

The agent smoothed his tie down, flattening it down his belly to his belt. It was a foolish gesture, with a foolish accoutrement. In a lesser man, it would signal nervousness or insecurity. Loki wondered how often Coulson used that gesture to buy time or gather his thoughts. Or to verify the location of hidden weapons, Loki realized. That last seemed extremely likely. "You killed me," Coulson accused, two deep furrows appearing between his brows.

"Guilty," Loki acceded, spreading his hands wide. He seated himself on the lounge, crossing his legs negligently.

Suddenly Coulson was scrabbling at the buttons at the front of his shirt, pushing aside the blue cotton to reveal relatively unmarred skin. His fingers traced down his sternum, finding only skin and a haze of brown hair where he had clearly expected the fatal wound. "How—?"

Loki shrugged. "Surely you Midgardians have legends of ghosts who appear as they were when they died? It is unnecessary for you to continue to display your injuries. I removed them."

Coulson pressed fingers once more to where the spear had exited his chest, fingertips shifting and shifting again as if to find the gap in the bone. "But I still remember. I can almost feel it."

"Of all the conversations I expected to have, this was one I had thought unnecessary. Is it so difficult?" Loki asked. "When I walk apart from my physical form, I am as I choose to appear, as I believe I am. You could appear as you last remembered yourself, I suppose, but I chose for you to be whole. My will, as a sorcerer and a higher being, would override yours, should you choose to exert it."

He watched the human re-fasten his shirt, button by nearly-transparent button, until his unflappable image had been restored. This was the agent he had seen in Barton's thoughts; the near-omniscient unfazed handler, managing all around him. "You want something, though. You didn't just stop in your conquest of Earth to invite over a houseguest."

Loki shocked himself by laughing. "No, of course not." He felt an unfamiliar smile on his lips. "No, I did not. Please, sit, and let us talk. Or would you prefer refreshment as we confer?"

"You have food?" the agent returned skeptically. "If I eat it, do I have to spend six months a year with you for the rest of eternity?"

"I have food, Agent Coulson, and no requirement of your eternal presence, rest assured," Loki quipped.

"Pancakes? I could really eat some pancakes. My stomach thinks my throat's been cut," he added wryly, "but that might by the fatal injury talking, not hunger."

**Home, T = 116**

Loki had never had pancakes before, not specifically, but the principle of sweet batter fried and then served with butter and sweet syrup was simple enough. He joined Coulson in his meal and made tentative overtures of conversation.

"We have met before, you know," he offered.

Coulson's calm, everyman persona was solidly back in place as he gave Loki a self-effacing smile. "When? I think I would have remembered. The horns, if nothing else," he said, indicating where Loki's horns would be on his helmet, "stand out." He frowned. "You don't mean when you killed me, do you? Please don't say you watched me while I was sleeping, or you were present while I was unconscious."

Loki frowned in response. "Why would I—?" He shook his head. "Mortals have the strangest turns of phrase," he muttered under his breath. "No, I mean when Thor fell to Midgard, banished. Little more than a year ago, in your relative time."

Coulson paused in his eating and set his utensils down on his plate at right angles to each other, points meeting in the plate's center. "Is that so?" he inquired mildly.

"Indeed." Loki considered for a moment.

"I didn't see you," Coulson said diffidently. His face was placid, but his blue eyes were intent, measuring.

Loki shrugged. "You did not. I went unseen by all but my broth— all but Thor that day." Loki thought of the lies he had told, the deceptions he had spun to keep Thor penned on Earth. Coulson did not need to know of those. "And do you know why he was there?" Anger bubbled hotly up from his ribs to his throat, his face. "Did he ever share the cause of his disgrace?" he demanded.

Agent Coulson shook his head slightly and shifted to rest the heels of his hands on the edge of the table.

"He started a war. He broke a centuries-old peace and invaded another world intent on slaughtering them all!"

Coulson shifted slightly as if the chair was suddenly confining. His expression had hardened somewhat, but his voice was still a gentle tenor as he asked, "And what was your role in this? Innocent bystander?"

"Oh, you would know what I did, Agent Coulson?" Loki's voice had dropped into the deceptively soft tone he used when baiting a trap. "I, Loki Silvertongue? What I said to persuade him to attack?" He smiled mirthlessly, a predator baring teeth. "I told him 'no'."

His smile widened to a vicious grin. "Are you surprised, Agent? Or did you already know that he had attempted genocide mere days before you met? Were you proud to count a mass-murderer among your friends? Do you find him a meet companion for the rest of your bloody-handed heroes? How many lives has Stark ended? Banner? Romanov has been killing for generations, and you hold her in high esteem."

"Thor told me that in his youth he courted war," Coulson began, but Loki interrupted.

"In his youth?" He questioned in disbelief. Loki shook his head sharply. "Always so disingenuous. It was but a year past! He invaded Jotunheim with the sole intention of exterminating every living being!" Loki's fingers whitened where they gripped the table. "When he found himself outmatched, he attempted to flee. When Odin arrived to rescue him, did he make his escape? No, he called upon his father to begin the massacre. And yet it is forgotten! It is forgiven!"

With a controlled shove, Loki pushed himself away from the table and stood. "Why him, and not me? Am I such a monster? Such an unexampled killer?" he continued, tone laden with irony. "No, I would be of a kind with any of your so-called Avengers." He leaned over, bracing one hand the table, pounding with his other fist. "Why can he be forgiven?"

Loki stopped short, breathing hard, and wished his words back behind his teeth, aware that his demands had turned to pleading, and that he had inadvertently revealed too much. He risked a glance at his companion and was surprised not to see a gloating triumph on his face. The vertical lines between his brows had disappeared, and instead Loki saw crows' feet angling down at the corners of his eyes.

Coulson's tongue emerged to barely tap his upper lip, as if he were uncertain of his next words' reception. "He asked," Coulson said gently.

For an endless moment, time froze in Loki's lungs. "What?" The word faded to nothing before its end as he ran out of air.

"We're pretty good at forgiveness," the human returned. "Some would say too good, some would say not good enough. In the end, though, often enough, if you ask for forgiveness, you may actually get it."

Loki felt time winding out between his hands as when he wielded the mirror, endlessly stretching, as the human waited for his response. Denial screamed at him. It could not be so simple. It was not. Forgiveness was hard-won, only after suffering and mortification of the guilty, only after torments commensurate with the original offense, only after sufficient time spent repenting the crime, only after, only after. His thoughts were lining up to chase one another when the human spoke.

"Relative time?"

The words startled Loki out of his contemplations. "What?"

"You said relative time," Coulson reiterated. His blue eyes were intent, measuring, as he looked across at Loki. "I presume that means you have a relative time of your own, different from mine."

A twist of Loki's fingers cleared the remains of their meal from the table. "You presume correctly, Agent Coulson. It has been a year and more since your death on your aerial fortress, your Helicarrier." He swept his hand toward the mirror that filled a wall of Home, fingers outstretched and pointing. "Would you know what has transpired since?" He extended his other hand toward Coulson as if to help him to his feet.

Coulson's jaw worked as his blue gaze flicked between Loki's offered assistance and the waiting mirror. After a moment he pushed his hands to the table and attempted to lever himself to his feet. He frowned again as his arms refused to support his weight.

Loki stepped around the table and supported Coulson's forearms as he lifted him to his feet. "You did die today," he offered. "Part of your mind remembers this, and makes you correspondingly weak." He assisted Coulson to the chaise and settled him there. "Your perceptions, your assumptions, persist."

Taking the mirror, he scrolled quickly to his home dimension to show Coulson the events after his death. "You became the rallying point," he narrated, as Fury tossed Coulson's bloodied Captain America trading cards on the conference table in front of Stark and Rogers. "The removal of the scepter cleared their minds somewhat, but the..." Loki paused as he took in Coulson's fixed expression. "What?"

"Nothing," Coulson muttered. "Nothing that matters now. Apparently you not only can't take it with you, you can't leave it in near-mint condition when you leave it behind."

Coulson took in a breath as if to continue, but no words were forthcoming. Loki considered the human thoughtfully. His face was still placid, but the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth slanted down once more, minute tells that Loki recalled from Barton's memories.

"My agents?" Coulson asked, his tone level, emotionless to any unfamiliar with him.

Loki considered taunting him with the information, but he had already promised to show Coulson what happened after his death. There was no need to chance alienating the man he hoped to make his ally. Instead, he scanned to the moment Barton encountered Romanov on the Helicarrier. "Romanov recovered him, almost at the same time as you..." He paused, unsure whether to mention the human's death again. "Your agents," he said admiringly, "fight like Thor and Sif."

They watched the brief struggle together, and Loki noted the slight upward tick of the agent's mouth as Romanov bit Barton after he pulled her hair. "We would say 'like brother and sister'," he corrected dryly.

Loki gave Coulson a quick summary of the events after his death, pausing only briefly at the human's comments and expostulations—"a NUKE? in Manhattan?"—and at his lack of funeral. "Your... the body... dissipated into energy in the morgue. There was nothing to bury, so they..." Loki trailed off apologetically.

"It doesn't matter," Coulson repeated. "Funerals are unusual for SHIELD personnel, anyway."

Before the ensuing pause became uncomfortable, Loki broke the silence by adding, "And then your Avengers sent me to Asgard with Thor to spend the rest of my existence imprisoned."

"Which has not exactly worked out as intended," Coulson opined.

Loki shot him a vulpine grin. "No, not exactly." He regarded the human narrowly. Coulson's energy had begun to flag even before the topic of the funeral had come up. "You should rest," he half suggested, half ordered.

"Why, because I've been mostly dead all day?" Coulson snarked back.

"Yes, and your mind is..."

"...still in the habit," Coulson finished for him. "Yes, I heard you the first time."

"We have much to discuss, but we also have time," he said, indicating the mirror. "I have no desire for your remaining energy to dissipate and you to vanish before my requirements are met." As Coulson set his jaw mutinously, Loki exerted his will, putting the mortal's mind to rest. "Sleep, Agent," Loki ordered.

Coulson did.


	9. Chapter 9

"Give up this poisonous dream. And come home."

—Thor

**Earth 1218, T = 117**

"Goodness," Tom said, eyebrows reaching toward his shock of curly hair. "How to summarize..." His head tipped backward, his eyes tracking upward as he searched for the words he needed to answer his interrogator. "Before my visit to Guinea, I knew that global hunger and malnutrition was a problem. But the issue was only academic in my mind. When you've seen malnourished children with your own eyes and their disadvantaged start in life, a moral imperative compels you to act and becomes impossible to ignore."

Loki considered his human doppelganger's words. When you've seen, a moral imperative compels you, he had said. Would the same have proved true for him? he mused. Thor had accused him of missing the point of ruling by considering himself above the mortals. Would a closer acquaintance with the humans have changed his behavior? Or was there something lacking in his nature, a compassion he, as Frost Giant, was entirely missing?

Then again, Thor had believed himself above all other creatures, from his brother to his mother to his own father, to say nothing of the Jotnar and the humans. It was only further exposure to Midgard that had changed his slow-witted thinking. Who was to say that he, Loki, might not alter his thoughts as well? Perhaps—

"What are you watching?" Coulson interrupted in his mild tenor.

**Home, T = 117**

Loki held the image of the human's "interview" and turned his gaze to his human guest. "Slept you well, Agent Coulson?" Loki inquired.

"It was a somewhat shorter sleep than I had been led to expect as a dead man," the mortal returned wryly. "And you knocked me out in my suit," he added in an aggrieved tone, indicating the random creases in his clothing.

Loki shrugged. "Your mind expects.." he began, but Coulson interrupted him as he had before.

"Yes, my mind expects wrinkles, therefore wrinkles exist." He paused thoughtfully. "And my will can make them go away," he said, more as a confirmation than a question.

Loki nodded, waiting, and after a moment the wrinkles and folds on Coulson's clothing released, leaving nothing but a sharp crease down the front of his pants.

"Well done. But don't get too ambitious," he cautioned. "I'm sure you have no desire to sink through a table or the floor." So saying, he moved Home's chair closer to the chaise and indicated that the human should sit.

"Oh, I don't know," Coulson returned, crossing his arms firmly over his chest. "So far I've seen no doors and no windows in your home. Leaving through the floor is beginning to sound like a viable option."

"I wouldn't recommend it, Agent Coulson." Loki attempted to glare down at the human standing above him. "To use one of your Earth expressions, 'there's no there there'." At the human's quizzical look, he gestured to the walls surrounding them. "This dimension contains only my home and all within it. There is no leaving; there is no outside. One might as well attempt to leave the universe."

He gestured again to the empty chair. "But perhaps I can show you something worthwhile during your stay."

As Coulson unbuttoned his jacket and sat, Loki smiled briefly, a quicksilver expression that was more a baring of teeth than anything genial, then indicated the mirror with a tilt of his head. "All realms, all times, all realities are visible to the mirror's bearer," he explained, "not just our shared home reality.

Coulson's brows rose, even as the corners of his mouth turned down. "All realities," he repeated slowly. "And this mirror," Coulson asked, "it shows you the reality you want?"

"It takes me where I ask," Loki agreed. "For example, in this universe there are no Aesir." At the human's nonplussed look, he clarified. "No Asgardians. No Frost Giants, no super soldiers, no Avengers, no aliens. Those are all fictional creations. My counterpart in this reality," he indicated where Tom sat, grinning, the single wheat-colored face in a cluster of ebony-skinned children, "is an actor. He impersonates me," he concluded, some of his original offense at the idea bleeding through into his tone.

He directed the mirror elsewhere and after a beat it responded. "In this universe, the heroes you know have been transformed into beings that are fictional in our reality." He grinned at Coulson's revulsion as he watched his hero, little more than an animated corpse, chew determinedly on a struggling human.

Loki flipped through a few of the more outlandish universes he had seen, frowning as it required more effort than before. The facets seemed to flash but sluggishly, and the mirror no longer flexed beneath his hands. Perhaps the human's presence was a drain, or perhaps Loki had been manipulating the mirror uninterrupted for too long. He settled on an image of Barton sleeping fitfully. "And then there is our original reality," Loki said, turning his eyes from the mirror to Coulson to gauge his reaction, "where Agent Barton still struggles to come to terms with my tenure as his... handler." An electric shock of triumph raced from his belly to his throat as he saw the flash of rage before the human could conceal it.

"So many universes, so many changes to be made," Loki continued softly as Coulson's gaze remained fixed to the mirror. "I find I regret some of the damage done to Barton. I have tried to repair it, but," he shrugged as Coulson's stare targeted him, "perhaps you would be more successful."

The agent's thinned lips had formed creases below the corners of his mouth. "What do you mean, changes?"

"Oh, did I neglect to mention?" Loki responded with mock innocence. "The marvel of this mirror is not the viewing of the worlds, but the ability to manipulate them." He paused, but Coulson's face had turned impassive. "Once, at least. Once in each reality, one can make a single alteration."

He waited again, but Coulson seemed content simply to let Loki explain on his own terms, making no reaction, either positive or negative. After a long moment's effort (really he should have rested when he made the human do so), Loki called up one of the realities where he had whispered in Barton's ear. "For example, I urged Agent Barton to take action, to better himself." Together, they watched as Barton became more and more impulsive, acting alone and refusing help, and the resulting chain reaction of destruction.

There was a faint rasp in Coulson's voice when he finally spoke. "What do you want, Loki? You said yourself it's a year since your invasion of Earth failed. Why now? Why me?"

"I find I desire a second perspective," Loki said. "And," here he paused a moment, "your Agent Barton thought quite highly of your strategic thinking. I find that I wish to avail myself of this. And after your death, you were... available... with fewer complications."

"And my motivation for helping you?"

"Come now, Coulson, will you truly allow your death to prevent you from assisting your Agent Barton?" Loki exerted his will and pushedagainst the mirror to focus in on the proper reality, and in the mirror Agent Barton startled awake from yet another nightmare, eyes red-rimmed and staring. "You could whisper in his sleep that it wasn't his fault; it might at least allow him some ease. You could help him make a better choice or two with those ridiculous burgundy-wearing thugs, ask for ir accept assistance, perhaps."

The ensuing pause filled the room with thick silence.

"And then what?" Coulson asked at last.

"What?" Loki stared at the human, nonplussed.

"What else happens? How does it work? What happens next?" Coulson demanded.

"Agent Coulson, I have been working with the mirror for over a year of subjective time. I am in no way inclined to re-iterate all of my experience with it for your mortal benefit. Even if you could comprehend it."

One side of the mortal's mouth curled up in a smirk. "You don't know, do you?"

"What?" Loki repeated.

"In my experience, you have to understand a thing well to explain it." He shrugged dismissively. "If you don't understand how it works, you could just say so."

"I simply do not wish to waste time explaining it to a lesser being," Loki retorted, stung.

"Waste time? Whose, yours? You'll live forever, won't you?" the human countered. "And I'm dead. I'm not going to get any deader while you give me the intel I need to make a reasoned decision."

"I am surprised at you, Agent. I had thought you would be eager to help those who have been under your care."

"You yourself said it doesn't take you where you want to go, but where you ask," Coulson pointed out.

Loki winced internally. He had hoped that small slip had gone unnoticed. He hated being caught in a truth.

"Tell me what I need to know," Coulson demanded.

Loki hesitated a moment more, then capitulated. "One can make a single change. Once done, it cannot be undone. From there, time proceeds, altered, and one is relegated once more to the role of mere observer."

He continued quietly. "But it may be more even than that. There are certain pivots–nexes, critical points, I know not what to call them–where a single change may affect all the realities together. Where there had once been a profusion of possibilities, now they are pruned—fused, bundled somehow together. Where once there were choices, opportunities for free will, those can be... lost."

As Loki detailed the mirror's powers, Coulson's expression grew stony. By the time he explained that one choice could affect an entire cascade of off-shoot realities, the human's brows had met in a pinch of vertical lines above his crooked nose.

Coulson shook his head disbelievingly. "You haven't got a genie's lamp here. You've got a monkey's paw." Loki's expression must have shown his curiosity, because the human continued. "It gives you what you ask for, but in such a way that it's nothing you ever wanted." The way the corners of Coulson's mouth turned up had nothing to do with amusement and everything to do with menace. "It's just like you, isn't it? When it isn't deceiving you outright, it's following your words while disregarding your wishes."

Another heavy silence descended. "Is it sentient?" Coulson asked at last. "Is it deliberately capricious? Evil? Malicious?"

Loki paused, contemplating. "I have wondered. The mirror's mere existence was a closely-held secret." Reluctantly, he added, "But whoever whispered of it told also of its danger."

Strangely, the air of danger radiating from the human had faded with Loki's admission. "They were right," he said mildly, his harmless guise firmly back in place. "That is far too much power for anyone to wield.

"What if I did whisper to Barton that it wasn't his fault? How far would that conviction take him? From what you tell me, it's as likely as not that he would lose his sense of responsibility completely." He shook his head again, this time in denial. "Or if I told him to sleep, just sleep, so he can get some rest and begin to recover. Who's to say it wouldn't send him into a coma, or turn him into a narcoleptic, or," he shrugged, "something similar. Something that would fulfill the letter of the request, but make him anything but healed, anything but what I had intended."

"I don't think–" Loki began.

"But that's just it," Coulson interjected, "all you can do is think, because you don't know. No one knows. It's unpredictable, random, uncontrollable, and at least as likely to cause a cascade of damage as to do any good."

After a heartbeat, he continued, "And it's irreversible."

Loki hesitated. But then, what had he to lose by revealing this vulnerability to the human? If he could for a moment unburden himself of his pride and make the request, what might he gain? His will took hold of the mirror, pushing it to the now-twined realities he had seen so often before. "Perhaps," he began slowly, "perhaps what is done by one might be mitigated by another." He frowned slightly at the energy required to direct the mirror where he willed. The mirror seemed... resistant? No, more its response seemed muted, slowed, as if Loki were grasping it in a dream, ever-stretching, not-quite-reaching. The synchronized facets pulsed dully, sullenly, but finally resolved into an image of Asgard's weapons vault. "This is the world of Loki Odinson, second true-son of Odin, brother in blood to Thor."

He steeled himself for the human's comments, but the man made none. Briefly, Loki described his inadvertent change to this universe. He paused at the moment Loki-child absorbed Loki's poisonous words. Coulson's brows pulled briefly upward in sorrow at the devastation on the child's face, and Loki began to hope. He outlined both the course Loki-child's lives would follow, and the actions Loki himself had undertaken to undo his changes. He paused once again and was encouraged by the compassion on Coulson's face.

"I had no idea," Loki began lowly, "what might come. I spoke my words in haste and of my own bitterness. I know not what his life—their lives—might have been had I not—" He looked away from the mirror, away from the Coulson's kind gaze. His eyes stung, surely a result of too many hours staring at the mirror, and he blinked repeatedly to better distribute the moisture they produced.

Agent Coulson stretched one hand almost to Loki-child's face where it had begun to crumple in grief, then placed his other hand gently on Loki's shoulder. "I am sorry, Loki. It is a..." he paused and seemed to search for words, "a heavy thing to see the consequences of your actions, to regret, and to find no way to repair them."

He turned to look Loki full in the face, so close Loki could see the flecks of brown speckling his blue eyes. "But I can't fix this for you."

As Loki began to interrupt, Coulson shook his head. "No. For all the reasons I can't interfere in the other realities, and for one more: it's not my place to make those decisions for another person, to control someone else's mind and will, like that.

"What you did to Barton, to Selvig. It's horrifying to us how you enslaved them, took away every choice, every thought, every scrap of will. I can't do that—I won't. Not with the best intentions in the world. Not even as revenge."


	10. Chapter 10

"The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life's joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity."

—Loki

**Home, T = 119**

Under the guise of shifting his hands on the mirror's frame, Loki shrugged the mortal's hand off his shoulder. He turned from Coulson's too-close, too-perceptive gaze and watched the mirror's facets slowly dim. "Well then, what shall we talk about?" he asked dully.

"What were you watching before?" Coulson asked.

"Oh, the impostor," Loki responded with a humorless chuckle. "He claims he is the 'last person on the planet who can help' in this country." With effort, Loki forced the mirror to return to an interview on Tom Hiddleston's efforts to help others. "Yet he persists in his attempts. He has..." Loki paused for a moment, considering, "conviction."

Coulson nodded solemnly. "Perhaps you could find something similar in your own reality."

Loki flashed a humorless smile at him. "In my self, I believe you mean."

"And without me," Coulson added.

"Why would I do that?"

Coulson tipped his head slightly to the side. "This doesn't seem to be working out well for you," he said in a mild voice. "I've noticed the mirror is slower to respond than when you brought me here. I think I interfere with it. It's time for you to let me go home."

"Your home, Agent Coulson, is not what it once was. It hasn't existed for a year."

"Or, it was there just yesterday, from my point of view," he countered. "And I think the mirror is strained by trying to keep both of our timelines pinned together."

"You don't have a timeline any more than you have a home," Loki retorted. "That ended when, forgive me, you died on the Helicarrier."

The corners of Coulson's mouth turned up in a benign curve. "Was that a request?"

For forgiveness? Did he wish forgiveness from this mortal? His mind raced as he snapped, "Merely a figure of speech, I assure you!"

"We can discuss that later, I suppose." Coulson's crow's feet were angled to his temples again. "Now, I don't doubt that I died," he said, "but it didn't really 'take', did it?" He quirked an eyebrow at Loki inquisitively. "You said that reality was closed to you, that you couldn't change anything there. I think it's because you already did. You made a change when you took me."

"I gathered up your energy, your mind," Loki protested. "That doesn't mean you're not dead."

"It does if you 'gathered up' my body along with it," Coulson returned, an expression of polite interest on his face. "I don't think taking a ghost for an interdimensional stroll would count as altering the universe through that mirror. Do you?"

"I killed you," Loki grated out.

"And I resent that a great deal," Coulson replied. "But I'm willing to overlook that because I think you healed me directly after." Coulson tilted his head slightly to the side, smiling slightly. "It's the only thing that fits the facts."

Loki felt his eyes widening and his jaw dropped involuntarily. He had thought his substitution of Coulson by the illusory body had been seamless, and his explanations plausible. To be caught out by this human was embarrassing, to say the least. It seemed he had underestimated Coulson once more. It reminded him of his conversation with Black Widow when the woman had proved herself unexpectedly crafty. He wondered suddenly how much Coulson had absorbed from watching her interrogation techniques. It was information he had not bothered to look for when he was trawling Barton's memories.

Still, Coulson could be simply guessing, trawling for more information, attempting to get Loki to confirm his suppositions. "You died, Agent Coulson. Your medical professionals confirmed it. The body was taken to the morgue. Where it dissipated into energy."

"A completely illogical consequence of being stabbed by a metal implement and then bleeding out," Coulson pointed out.

**Earth 199999', T = 120**

Loki ignored Coulson for a moment, instead directing to the mirror to the Helicarrier's detention level in their shared reality to demonstrate the validity of his assertions. Again, the mirror seemed to resist his efforts. This time he focused on the drag transmitted from the mirror to his grasp. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the mirror seemed almost to be pulling toward Coulson.

He glanced at the human out of the corner of his eye as the Helicarrier materialized in the mirror in front of them. He had chosen a moment after the body had been removed. The smear of Coulson's blood on the wall and the deckplates below was still red and fresh.

Yesterday-Loki blurred into visibility, a limp Coulson pressed into his side. "Asgardian. Bastard," Coulson said lowly, "...killed me."

"So it would appear, Agent Coulson." With an overdramatic twist of his hand, yesterday-Loki repaired Coulson's suit, returning it to its whole and pristine condition.

**Home, T = 120**

"That was what confirmed it for me, you know," Coulson offered diffidently.

"Repairing your suit?" Loki demanded, flummoxed.

"Repairing it for the second time," Coulson corrected. "When you fixed it this morning?"

Loki schooled his face to remain impassive while he mentally castigated himself. It had been a calculated risk, to repair Coulson's suit in a bid to convince the human of his own power to do so. Within the mirror, Coulson shot his cuffs to expose the perfect length of sleeve, all the while assessing his captor. The mirror itself pulled toward the mortal as iron to a lodestone. Here in Home, Coulson's brows were quirked into symmetrical arches folding his forehead into politely inquisitive lines.

"Loki," Coulson began in his light tenor, "You can't keep me here forever. It won't allow you. I can feel it pulling at me." He stretched his hand toward the mirror and it practically jumped in Loki's grasp. Coulson's hand started to vibrate, so quickly that its edges seemed to blur. "Wow, that stings."

Coulson stood and backed a few steps away from the mirror, crossing his arms over his chest. Two small curves appeared, bracketing the corners of his mouth. "I know you didn't save me for my benefit. But I am alive now. Send me home."

Loki flung the mirror from him, shoving himself to his feet a moment later. The mirror covered the far wall, its facets grown dim as Loki's will faded from them. "I will do as I will, mortal!" Loki snarled. "You are here at my whim, and shall remain so." He glared resentfully as the mortal lacked the decency to even flinch, much less cower, at Loki's fit of temper.

The smile lines disappeared, but Coulson's expression remained as placid as before. "I don't think so," he said with a diffident head-tilt. "I think in large part I'm here at its whim," he said, gesturing to the mirror where it filled the wall, "and I think you're going to have some difficulty bargaining with something that may or may not be self aware, and that can alter reality in any dimension at any time.

"And from what I just felt," Coulson continued, "I'm a cork in a bottle, a rock damming up a stream, and the mirror doesn't like that very much. I think I'm only here until it strips me down to my component subatomic particles and returns me to the vacuum you left behind when you took me."

Loki stalked toward the mirror, then turned and paced back toward Coulson. He turned toward the mirror, and growled. "I will not be constrained!" he shouted. With a compression wave of anger, as he sent every item within Home flying from him to crash up against the walls. Except Coulson, who stood as a obelisk in a gale.

Neither spoke for the uneasy moments it took the fragments of furniture to settle. "You seem to have free run of the universes, all of them," Coulson said mildly, "but only if I'm not here." He paused a moment. "Put me back, Loki. Please."

With a quick cantrip, Loki clothed himself in his armor. It would not do to walk the world tree so vulnerable. He strode to the mirror and took it between his hands, walking it back to where Coulson waited, blinking.

"I think my brain just tried to turn itself inside out," he commented wryly.

Curious, Loki asked, "What did you see?"

Coulson grimaced and blinked again. "The mirror stayed the same size, but as you walked toward it, it fit into your hands, but it still covered the wall, and it..." His tongue swept his upper lip briefly. "It wasn't pleasant."

Loki felt his lips tug upward in amusement at the understatement, so typical of the man. Coulson wore his cloak of insignificance much as Loki wrapped himself in invisibility. "Well, Agent Coulson," he began, "you cannot return to the exact time you left. Too much hinges on your 'death' there. Where shall we put you, then?"

**Home, T = 121**

As Loki returned Home, Agent Coulson's parting words burned, burned, burned in his mind. "Thank you for your cooperation." Cooperative? He, Loki? He was not such! He was his own, with his own mind and will but... Perhaps random 'cooperation' could be as unexpected as any other act of chaos.

And now, where next to bend his will?


End file.
